Psychologists have discovered why LOTO millionaires in Serbia want to remain anonymous.
Source: Kurir/Petar Aleksić
The new lotto week “heavy” about 5.1 million euros went to Pancevo, and the past experience with previous winners of large sums of money in games of chance in Serbia shows that and this lucky winner remain anonymous and hidden from the general public.Fear for safety and envy of the environment, according to the interlocutors of ‘Blic’, are the main reasons why unlike, for example, Americans who, after such a win, very quickly present themselves to the media in the USApeople in Serbia who become millionaires overnight thanks to the main lottery win, do not want to reveal their identity.
“That one would be robbed in a few days”
For psychologist Žarko Trebješanin, as he tells Blic, there is a very practical reason why the lucky winners do not want to be known, “and that is one’s own safety and it doesn’t take a lot of psychology to explain it“. “The first thing that a person thinks is imagine that someone who received a huge amount of money in Serbia calls and presents himself, well, he would have been robbed within a few days, that’s almost certain. So if you live in a society where you don’t have security and protection, it’s quite reasonable that people don’t want to become known to the public for that reason. And there is also the fact that a lot of people would contact the lucky winner to lend them some of the winnings, and most of them would not return it.“, says Trebješanin.
Our environment does not tolerate any winners
After security, there are also sociological and cultural reasons why lottery millionaires in Serbia remain unknown to the general public. Because, as sociologist Aleksa Vukašinović explains for Blic, “any discrimination in our society is fundamentally unacceptableespecially if it is based on some economic and material difference”.
“Nobody wants to be denounced as someone who got a lot of money easily. He does not want to incur the envy and anger of the environment and to create potential enemies who would steal or deceive him. So, provided that the whole lottery system is what it claims to be, which is to say that people really win a lot of money or at least a part of that money, then in the middle it is the first – the moment of culture itself, that it is not wise to stand out at any cost“, Vukašinović believes.
This, he adds, is a special form of problem because we, as a society, are a kind of ketman culture – we give legitimacy to the use of mimicry in case of threats. “Our culture fundamentally does not allow and even condemns being successful. Of course, this is no praise for the entrepreneurial society, whose pathology is only grafted onto the pathology of our traditional society, and then we have a hybrid of the two. Our environment does not tolerate any winners, but traditionally loves suffering and tragedy. We have developed this culture of misery and suffering as fundamental virtues. In our country, a poor and suffering man is righteous,” Vukašinović believes.
Poverty as a virtue, according to Žarko Trebješanin, has been lost in Serbia, and here, as he says, “people became very greedy”. “If we’re looking for psychological causes, it’s more likely to be the envy of the environment, which, of course, carries with it a bunch of other negativity that would be aimed at the lucky winner of the lottery,” he points out.
Money is not a magic wand that solves all problems
In contrast to Serbia, for example, in the West and especially in the USA, lottery winners often stand out publicly, and the public later becomes aware of how they squandered that money, which is usually followed by family breakups. “Of course, money is not a magic wand that solves all problems and makes people happy. Through these examples, we see the dark side of money and that the results are bad and unfortunate. Surely such stories are a reason why people don’t want to stand out, but primarily in Serbia there is fear for their safety,” concludes Žarko Trebješanin.
We are also culturally different from Americans and unsafe, continues psychologist Leo Ivanišević, emphasizing that winning a lot of money is certainly a traumatic life change for the winner himself. “From a security point of view, it is not good for everyone to know how much money you have. Some books even advise that when you buy an expensive TV, throw away the box immediately, and not leave it visible in front of the door. Or that you don’t post vacation photos while you’re there, because then potential burglars know you’re not home. When we add to all that our culture and prejudices in the sense that money is “dirty”, that it is not possible to get a large amount in an honest way and that it corrupts a person, we arrive at the completely justified anonymity of lottery winners”, explains Ivanišević.
“As it came, so it went”
In the previous period, the media still managed to reach some lucky winners, who of course did not want to fully reveal their identity, and their confessions, although only their family or close friends knew about their lotto weeks, amounted to – “I saw that no one rejoices, they just look at you somehow differently” and “as it came, so it went”.
So, after the last lotto week, people on social networks immediately remembered the case of Milan P. from a village near Ostružnica, who a few years ago won half a million euros in a game of chance. According to his experience, after announcing the good news to his family, he had an agreement with them not to tell anyone about the winnings, until it was determined how the money would be spent. But the secret did not last long.
“In the beginning, all the family members “squeezed together”, but they quickly started spending money. Suddenly they needed everything – machines, a separate house, an apartment in Belgrade and more cars. It was as if some force was pushing me to get rid of it, because I knew it had fallen from the sky. I also invested money in deals with some butchers and farmers, but there was a bad calculation. I put something in the bank for savings, but the children took it all. They didn’t want to do anything, just boss. I saw it, but I wasn’t allowed to say anything, we immediately quarreled. The woman knew that I had someone else on the side, it started to bother her that the money was going there as well – the experience of Milan P. is being shared on social networks.
It is added that he himself said that “he did not know how to dispose of such large sums of money and he knew that various relatives and friends would come after him”. When asked how he managed to squander all the winnings, he replied – “there is no wealth that cannot be spent”.
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03:34 Pobedink lotoa Izvor: tiktok/@tararistic4
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(Flash/MONDO/J.D.)